


You Only Live Once

by Spacecadet72



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:58:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spacecadet72/pseuds/Spacecadet72
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry learns that Adam isn't the only one who shares his curse, and that not every immortal has the same disdain for modern pop culture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Only Live Once

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of a love of Henry being a cantankerous old man and a desire to see another immortal fully embrace modern technology and culture and the contrast between the two. 
> 
> The plot bunny attacked me at work earlier and it wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. Even though I'm 10,000+ words behind on nanowrimo and have a talk to give on Sunday that I haven't even started preparing for. #YOLO #priorities

She had come into his shop unannounced, saying that she could help him with his "Adam problem." 

“He’s an ass, and I’d like to do what I can to help.” she’d said, holding out her hand for him to shake. 

She was young. Well, she looked young. She acted the part, wearing skinny jeans and flats, and holding her large bedazzled phone in her hand. 

In reality she was more than twice Henry’s age having been born in the late fourteenth Century. She had been burned at the stake for practicing "witchcraft." 

"If they only knew." She'd said dryly when she told him.

Her name was Emily. They certainly hadn’t become fast friends, but after several months of working together, tracking down Adam, searching for the answers to their curse, they’d formed a partnership, a familiarity that brought them both comfort. Even if they didn’t exactly have the same perspective on the modern age.  
\----  
The first time she'd said "But first let me take a selfie," before pulling her iPhone out of her pocket and making a face at the camera, he had stared, open mouthed and incredulous at her. He knew what selfies were, of course, had seen teenagers taking them on the subway, usually with earbuds in and a ridiculous expression, sometimes involving puckered mouths and wide eyes. (He had since been informed that this was known as "duckface")

She took the photo and pulled the phone down, glancing at the screen to add a filter and some hashtags. She glanced up at him, taking in his expression which had turned from shock to an overall air of grumpiness. 

"What?" she asked, confused as she posted the photo to instagram. 

"I'm just having some difficulty understanding how someone born in the time of Joan of Arc could seriously participate in this generation's normalized narcissism."

She rolled her eyes. "Give me a break, Grandpa. Despite what Generation X will tell you, Millennials and their selfies are not going to be the downfall of society. Besides," she said as she finally slipped the phone into her pocket. "You've been around long enough to know that nothing really changes. You want to talk about selfies? Let's talk about the sixteenth century sometime."

“You’re nearer a thousand years than not, Emily. Can’t you act your age?”

“Says the man who creepy Sherlock flirts with women 200 years younger than he is.” she retorted as they began walking down the sidewalk again. 

He looked at her, offended. “I do not...creepy flirt.”

“You come on a little strong. The only reason you get away with it is because you’ve got that whole hot British history professor thing going on. Chicks dig that.” she reached over and ruffled his hair. 

He batted her hand away and smoothed his hair back into place. 

“Thank you. I think.”  
\-----  
"I'll see you tomorrow, Detective." Henry said warmly as he walked Jo out of the shop.

Emily sat in a chair at the back of the front room, supposedly reading a book. She was really watching Jo and Henry flirt and restraining herself from sighing dreamily at the sight. 

At least until Jo was out of earshot. 

"What is it?" Henry asked as he walked back into the room, eyeing her warily. 

“I ship it. I ship it so hard.” she said, sighing again. 

Henry made a noise that could only be characterized as a harrumph. She had tried explaining shipping to him a few weeks ago, but the lesson hadn’t gone well. After listening to her go over the final details for fifteen minutes, he'd told her that he'd been on a ship before, and the experience hadn't had a positive effect on any of his relationships.

“I can assure you that the Detective and I are only…” he began, the words practiced and used often around her and Abe. 

“Oh, please,” she cut him off, giving him a look. “I haven’t seen that much eyesex outside of a romcom in years.”

Henry shifted in discomfort. He certainly wasn’t opposed to sex, nor was he against frank discussion of sexual topics, but Emily knew that hearing such a term thrown out so casually in reference to him and the Detective wasn’t something he wanted to hear. He was still in denial and it was adorable. Frustrating and adorable. 

“We’re just friends.” he repeated sternly, before excusing himself and walking out of the room. 

She returned to her book with a grin. Not for too much longer, she suspected.  
\------  
“Could you please turn that down?”

Emily looked up from her tablet to see Henry grimacing as he gestured to her phone that was sitting on the side table and blasting “The Best Song Ever.” 

She turned her attention back to her tablet without touching the volume button. “I don’t ask you to turn off your opera, Henry, leave my boy bands alone.” 

“That’s because you like opera.” he said, sounding exasperated. 

She looked up at him, and grinned. He was right. “Just because I like the classics doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the new stuff too.” 

“Classical music is the…”

“...foundation of a civilized society, yeah, you’ve told me that before. Every savage can...play an..okay, that sounded better in my head.” she admitted, rubbing the back of her neck. 

He smiled. “And when Jane Austen wrote it. It’s good to see you have some taste.”

She opened her mouth to lecture him right back, when the song changed. Her eyes lit up as the first few notes of the song began to play. She bobbed her head in time to the upbeat Taylor Swift song and mouthed along with the lyrics. 

Henry threw his hands up and walked out of the room. She grinned and belted along with the song, singing louder than normal for his benefit. 

“We are never ever ever getting back together…”  
\--------  
“All I’m saying is that the entertainment of today isn’t as refined as the literature and plays of centuries ago.” he argued, as they played checkers. She wouldn’t play chess. She said the planning and strategy reminded her too much of life.

“You wouldn’t think Shakespeare was so high brow if you’d ever been to one of his shows.” she said, jumping two of his pieces in a couple of jumps. 

“Well, we didn’t have Jersey Housewives back then.” he argued, frowning when he was only able to move his piece one square.

“Only because there were no video cameras then. I don’t see why it has to be an either/or. There have been good and bad of everything in the past and now. There’s as much value in today’s pop culture as in the pop culture of 200, 500 or 700 years ago, you just don’t want to see it.” her tone was getting passionate now, having been given an opportunity to get on her soap box. “I may not spend my time learning about thermodynamics or the properties of arsenic, but this is how the current generation expresses itself. It represents centuries of cultural change, while at the same time the constant nature of humanity. And these young people will do great things. Oh, not all of them, to be sure,” she said when he opened his mouth to protest, “but not everyone in the 1400’s was a Joan of Arc or a Leonardo da Vinci either. And some of them are going to do it with twitter and facebook.” 

He closed his mouth against the argument rising in his throat. Despite the fact that she looked barely old enough to have graduated high school, she could argue circles around him any day of the week, and he knew it. 

She moved her piece to the back of the board. “King me.”  
\-------  
"#Blessed." she said as they all sat around the table after dinner. She beamed as she said it, her smile only growing as Henry scowled.

Jo smirked into her wine glass, knowing that Emily only did it to get under Henry’s skin. Even if she still thought Emily was Henry’s niece.

Emily took a sip of her own wine, grateful that she had reached her "21st" birthday this time around.

"Can't you express a heartfelt and personal thanks instead of using a prepackaged sentiment that is used so often that it has lost all meaning?" He lectured with a sigh. 

She suppressed her initial reaction to roll her eyes. One of these days she was going to strain something. 

"Like 'I'm fine, how are you?'" she said with a raised eyebrow. "Clichés aren't a new thing. And I do feel blessed. Why waste words, whose order would have certainly been used before, to express all that I want to say? You're the one who's always telling me to 'economical.'" she used air quotes on the last word, another practice she knew Henry despised.

"She's got you there, Henry." Abe said with a laugh. 

Emily smiled at him.

Henry nodded to her, conceding his defeat and raised his glass. "To the blessings that come from close friends and family." 

As everyone repeated the toast, Emily was glad that she'd found her way into this makeshift family. Eternity was too long to go it alone.


End file.
